The work of Firouz FarmanFarmaian (click here to view full VR show, Let’s Get Lost (Let Them Sound Out Alarms), an Iranian-born artist living in exile in Europe and Morocco, is informed by memory, symbolism and the multiplicity of current affairs.  His compositions, including New Form I and II, are spontaneous and energetically textural, prioritizing a tension between realism and abstraction. The raw emotion embedded in his works is tempered with their materiality, which reveals a strong emphasis on craftsmanship.  The acrylic paintings are deftly paired with a spoken word poem playing nearby, creating a visual rhythm across mediums.  Exploring destruction, anarchy, and war, the poem gives way to expressing a need to lose one reality in order to find a new, improved one.  Paired with the organic shapes in acrylic, resembling new life forms, these works express a hope for a better reality after the widespread destruction of a pandemic and global-scale war.

 FarmanFarmaian is an artist working in painting, sculpture, film, installation and music. His work intersects issues of nature, architectonics, diaspora, and the impact of circumstance.  After fleeing the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he went on to study Architecture and Visual Arts.  He has recently participated in exhibitions and art fairs, including Memorandum of the Unknown Path at the Theatre Royal de Marrakech, Marrakech (2020); Permanence of Trace at We R the Nomads and Space@50, London (2019); Poetry of the Tribe at Salomon Arts Gallery and Leonard Tourne Gallery, New York City (2018); and Memory and Future/Future and Memory at Shirin Gallery, New York City (2016).

Courtesy of the artist